MICK OFIELD INTERVIEW
Tales of sketches and skirmishes as the Brit bike industry collapsed
Motorcycle designer Mick Ofield worked at the heart of the British industry before quitting to start a new life in the States 40 years ago. He recounts the frustrations of trying to innovate against a backdrop of poor British management and limited budgets... and how he rebuilt his career in America
Engineers and industrial designers don’t sign their creations, but nothing would exist if it wasn’t for their outstanding work. British designer and artist Mick Ofield is one of them – one of the talented backroom boys who created several important British motorcycles at a time when lack of funding and foresight by the management was killing the industry.
After graduating with a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Product Design from Leicester College in 1972, Mick learned the fine art of sculpture in his spare time, while looking for a job as an industrial designer.
He got several interviews – one of them with Norton. “I met Bob Trigg in Norton Villiers at Wolverhampton,” Mick recalls. “He seemed impressed with my portfolio and gave me some small projects before hiring me. My first task was to be the missing link between designers and draughtsmen and to check if what was built was aesthetically and ergonomically correct. Basically, as a practical designer with a strong mechanical background, I was there to prevent the look of a bike being ruined because of a single poorly-designed part.”
But the early enthusiasm wasn’t to last. The young man, who raced every weekend on the local race track, was way more excited by the prospect of improving the performance of the bikes. And Norton was definitively not planning a racing project in the short term.
”I was so excited to work at Norton, because I thought I would end up working on their rumoured new fourcylinder engine,” he says. “But there was nothing in the pipeline, just some lame ideas to improve the old [twincylinder, four-stroke) engines. The Cosworth P86 could have been exciting, but it was only a twin – we had
nothing to fight back against Honda with their CB750!”
At this time, the British motorcycle industry didn’t have the funds to finance the brilliant ideas of its engineers. There were a lot of very clever people working within the industry, both at Norton Villiers and BSA/ Triumph. However, there was no money to fund many of the ideas. There were also political problems both internally with ‘turf wars’ and externally with the government. The former were, to a large extent, resolved at Kitts Green and later at Shenstone. The latter eventually bankrupted Norton.
“This was happening at a time when the Commando was selling well and the Norton workers deserved better. All the production and quality control problems were pretty much resolved with the launch of the 850 Commando. Most of the quality problems were directly related to the archaic machinery that was being used for production,” he sighs.
Mick finally joined a group working on a new 850cc variant of the original 750cc Commando. He had the onerous task of coming up with ideas – despite insufficient funding – to modify the parts by finding creative and inexpensive ways to design a significantly different version of the model.
It ended up as a cosmetic makeover – more traditional livery than the original metalflake of the early Commandos, a modified seat to add comfort and style with extra foam for more comfort on longer rides, and modified clocks returning to a more classic style. Mick also worked on the design of a new two-stroke, single-cylinder motocross bike, an AJS 500. “The company wanted to bring AJS back to the top level in motocross. We had a revolutionary 500cc engine, a newstyle five-speed gearbox and Silentbloc bushings on the swingarm. My job was to design the tank, the seat and the number plates.
“This was the first bike in the world with the seat covering the tank. I collected a ton of pictures and saw that the riders crawled all over the tank in turns to load up the front wheel for grip, and needed a comfortable way to do that. The AJS 500 won its first race with Vic Eastwood. It was a powerful but quiet bike. It could have become a success, but the company never produced it. The management didn’t think that a two-stroke could have any commercial success. History proved them wrong, but it was too late.”
After this excursion into the world of motocross, Mick went back to his roots and started to work on new versions of the Commando, modifying the handlebars and thus the whole ergonomics of the motorcycle. But
Norton wasn’t pleased. Innovation wasn’t really in the DNA of the brand at the time. Not with the Commando, anyway. Norton did have The P86 programme mentioned by Mick involved working with Cosworth to develop a V-twin engine (effectively two cylinders sliced off their super-successful V8 F1 car engine) to power a race bike called the Challenge to replace the Commando.
Mick was finally allowed in as part of the engine development programme. “Building the twin from a V8 was supposed to be the future, but the project was ruined by internal tension, lack of funding, and, last but not least, a bunch of impractical ideas from Dr Bauer [Dr Stephan Bauer, the former Rolls-royce engineer, who came up with the ‘Isolastic’ suspension systems to keep the Norton Commando vibration-free].”
Mick didn’t expand on his comments, but did work with Sam Wheeler to create multiple versions of crankcases, sculpting them at 1:1 scale from polystyrene blocks to mock them up and then get them cast in the Villiers foundry. These crankcases were tested on the dyno and everything seemed fine up to the bike’s first track tests. But the racing version of the engine proved to be heavier and slower than the air-cooled Norton Commandos used by the John Player-backed works team.
“Everybody was ecstatic about the sound of the engine, but the speed was not there,” admits Mick. He ended up staying in the engine department, being put to work on the Triumph T160. “My goal was to make the bike look lighter while raising ground clearance. The four exhaust pipes would give the illusion of a four-cylinder – but the BSA version of this engine was delivering more power, with a better look, and without all the carburation issues that we had on the Norton Commando or P86.” Mick then worked with the team designing the John Player Norton café racer. “The bike was a huge commercial success,” he says, “but not that much fun to ride. It was one of the very few times when I sacrificed some practical aspects in order to save the aesthetic of the machine. I wanted the fairing to be as close as possible to the one on the works racer, in order to sell the street-legal bike more easily. But the racing team started the season with a two-headlight fairing (in international endurance events) with mediocre results. Then we had to add an electric start to the road bike, which added weight.” From 1977 to 1980, he worked on the new P41 Norton Interpol 2, which was powered by the air-cooled 588cc rotary engine. The pre-production model was compact and powerful, but the air cooling system was not efficient enough – even in the cold conditions encountered in the UK.
“If we had spent more time studying what Mazda
‘BUILDING THE TWIN FROM A V8 WAS SUPPOSED TO BE THE FUTURE, BUT THE PROJECT WAS RUINED BY INTERNAL TENSION’
were doing with their cars, we might have made some major improvements,” says Mick with an air of resignation. Despite its huge potential, the production of the P41 was delayed a few times, forcing Mick out of the project. After so many years spent working on big-bore motorcycles, moving to the P10 Easy Rider moped project seemed like a welcome distraction. Working with Bertie Goodman of Velocette fame, and then Tony Dennis, Mick helped to develop the small, step-through moped – and in less than a year, the finished model had been shipped to the dealers. A sport model was then added to the catalogue, with a fake tank to appeal to young buyers. The commercial success of the P10 brought some much-needed cash to the company.
Mick didn’t just work on the development of complete motorcycles. He was often trying to make improvements to parts that were already in production – like trying to reduce the weight of the brake calipers for the Norton Commando by mounting them on new, larger-diameter forks and a larger axle designed to increase torsional stiffness. The results were not that positive for the brakes, but the next generation of forks were developed accordingly to Mick’s research. He also developed a revised lubrication system for the BSA B50 singlecylinder engine in order to allow higher revs. Moving to work for a Japanese company, Mick attempted to transform Yamaha’s XS650 with a racing flat-track version, along with working on the production and police models. “It didn’t work. We had serious handling issues after 100mph. The frame was way too flexy!” he recalls. Mick enjoyed the experience of working with the Japanese company, although he admits it wasn’t an easy process.
“Their components were way better than their British counterparts – but on the other hand, I never knew what they thought about my designs because communication was so difficult It was really frustrating!”
When an opportunity arose to spend time in the States working on armoured vehicles for the US army, Mick grabbed it and found it a refreshing experience. “I discovered a totally new culture and a fast pace of getting things done. I was frustrated with the lack of improvement at Norton, and I didn’t like the co-op way we had to work at Triumph. It was going nowhere.”
Once in the States, Mick was hired by Bates in 1980, and drew fairings, saddlebags, crash bars and other accessories, most of them for the Honda Gold Wing, which was sold as a naked motorcycle in its early years and was crying out for bolt-on luggage kit.
Using his road racing experience, he also designed gloves and boots and ended up spending ten years with Bates. After that stint, he launched his own company, Designworks, creating ads for numerous accessory brands until his retirement in 2007.
But retirement allowed Mick to follow his first love – racing. His first race had been in 1969 at Silverstone on a Norton Dominator 500. Back then, in his student days, he would ride to the track, compete in the race and then ride home on the Norton. It wasn’t until 1972 that he
‘THE LACK OF IMPROVEMENT AT NORTON WAS FRUSTRATING, AND I DIDN’T LIKE THE CO-OP WAY OF WORKING AT TRIUMPH’
bought a Ford van and went to the Isle of Man for the Southern 100. In 1977, he slotted an 850cc Norton engine into a Vendetta frame and went back to the Southern 100, where he finished 12th out of 40 starters, as well as his machine being the first British bike home.
Over in the States he did club races on the west coast and won several championships riding a range of different bikes – a Yamahatz250, 750 and 900cc Ducatis, and his original Vendetta Norton.
In 2000, he celebrated the turn of the century by buying three secondhand Ducati 450s and building a race bike using the best parts. He raced this 450 and his Ducati Pantah 750 up to the end of his racing career in 2004, after 35 years of continuous competition.
Today, Mick is no longer racing, but still rides his Honda ST1300 on the roads of Tennessee. When he’s not cruising on the country backroads, he enjoys spending time in his studio, drawing race bikes with no fairing, exposing their beautiful engines.
“I’m doing a lot of research, trying to meet the riders, their mechanics, and if possible the engineers, in order to do the most accurate drawings possible,” he explains. He sells his art through Facebook, though he says this is not a business. “I don’t do that for the money, but to use my artistic and industrial skills with a purpose.” He also embraces new technology. “The new digital tools help me to get an extraordinary accuracy and I really love it.”